"What other kind of trivia do you like?" he asked, his husky voice at odds with the let's-lighten-the-moment question.
"Baseball's about my favorite, but I like all natural history, too."
"A woman of many interests," Cole said. "My kind of lady."
She only wished she were.
Several strong gusts of wind pulled hard on the sails, and the craft lurched to one side. Cole's attention shifted to the boat, where he made a couple of quick adjustments, again bringing it under control. Brenna watched him, enjoying his confidence in himself and his ability to keep the boat on the course he wanted.
"I better pay attention to what I'm doing, or we could end up in the drink," he said.
Brenna smiled. "That's one way to impress a woman with your sailing prowess."
He chuckled. "Never mind that the woman in question is too damn distracting."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
As if by tacit agreement, they let the silence stretch between them—a comfortable, easy silence. Gradually her attention focused beyond Cole. Farther away she heard the call of other voices, the endless traffic moving across the dam, the distant roar of an airplane as it made its approach to Denver International Airport. She imagined being with Cole when the only sounds were those of the vessel gliding through the water, punctuated occasionally by the calls of birds soaring overhead.
She closed her eyes and lifted her face into the breeze, giving herself to the wind and the flying mist with an abandon she usually did not allow.
She loved the feeling of racing across the water. "Maybe you could teach me how to sail."
"Any time you want," he answered. "Ready about."
"Aye, aye, Captain," she said with a smile, ducking under the boom as Cole skillfully turned the sailboat back in the direction they had come. Bright sails from other boats dotted the lake, and the high-rise office buildings to the northwest stood in sharp relief. Cole never tired of the view, but just now he had something better to watch. Brenna.
Mahogany highlights glinted in her loose hair. Fine strands blew across her face in a continuing caress that made Cole wish he could touch her. Her legs seemed longer than they had in the cheerleader's uniform she wore at work. Her faded cutoffs, nearly white from countless washings, faithfully clung to every curve between her waist and thighs. An oversize pale blue cotton shirt was knotted at her waist over a darker blue tank top. The wind billowed through the fabric, hiding a lush body that he had undressed only in his dreams.
"Want to eat lunch yet?" he asked.
"I'll probably be starved later, but right now I don't want you to stop. This feels too good."
"Yeah," he agreed, his gaze again sliding over her. He imagined her coming to him as she was now—her face lit with a smile of pure sensual enjoyment.
Brenna let her mind drift. She felt as though the wind had caught all her worries and blown them away. Through half-closed eyes, she watched Cole tack the craft across the lake with the complete ease of a man who had spent hundreds of hours sailing. He grinned when he caught her watching him.
She decided the way he looked today was her favorite. No unapproachable, stern lawyer. He wore tan cotton shorts and a loose red T-shirt. Even as she watched, he stripped away the shirt, revealing an expanse of tanned chest rippling with a hard washboard of muscle that made her breath catch. She looked away, licked her lips, then looked back. The swirls of hair that covered his chest were the same golden brown shade as his head, and every bit as inviting to touch. Then, she imagined him without even the shorts. Heat chased through her, and she tore her gaze away.
"Hungry yet?" he asked, steering the craft toward a secluded expanse of shoreline.
"God, yes," she murmured.
"Like Italian subs?"
"Love them," she replied.
"Gee, too bad I only brought one. I figured you were more the liverwurst type." His eyes lit with teasing.
"Fat chance," she answered.
Cole lowered the sail, and the boat slid soundlessly toward the shore. He threw a rope tied to the bow into the water, and eased himself out of the boat. Picking up the rope, he waded to shore, anchored it under a rock, and came back.
Brenna started to stand, then immediately sat back down when the boat rocked.
"You make that look so easy," Brenna said, eyeing the shallow water, convinced she was about to take a dunking.
"Piece of cake," he said. He caught her under her knees and across her back, and effortlessly lifted her out of the craft.
"I—" Can walk, she whispered in the deep recesses of her mind. Except, she didn't want to.
Caught against Cole's chest, she was assailed with his warm scent—soap, deodorant and him all blended together in an aroma that made her stomach tighten. So much skin touched her, burned her, drew her irresistibly closer. She looped her arms around his neck, acutely aware of his hand searing her bare leg, his other hand scorching through the cotton of her shirt.
She turned slightly in his arms, enjoying the sensation of being fully pressed against him.
He stopped walking, the water lapping around his legs, his gaze caught with hers. Her breath hitched painfully in her chest, and she looked at his mouth, then back at his eyes. On a groan, he closed them and lowered his head.
The instant his mouth touched Brenna's, she opened hers wide, inviting—demanding—his possession. Heat and the nubby touch of tongue gliding over tongue consumed her. She pressed her hands against his neck, which felt nearly as hot as his mouth.
Sharp need flowed through her and pooled low in her belly. Her focus narrowed to the sensation of their mated mouths. The other night he'd taught her yearning and wanting. Now he taught her combustion, paling all her previous experiences.
The roar of a speedboat and catcalls from a group of teenagers as they sped by shocked Brenna out of the consuming kiss. Cole's gaze roamed over her mouth and face before he looked away. He took a deep breath.
"We left lunch in the boat," he said finally.
She wiggled her toes. "Probably because you had your … um, hands full."
He grinned, squeezed her, and waded out of the water. He set her down, steadying her as though he knew her legs wouldn't hold her upright. She glanced around the small cove. For the moment no one else was close by, but the shore had about as much real privacy as a department-store window.
"Damn," Cole said on a ragged sigh, his thoughts apparently echoing her own.
"Damn?"
He smiled and tilted her chin back with his finger, then gave her another thorough kiss. "Yeah. Damn. I want you, and I wouldn't have brought you here if I'd known you'd have this kind of effect on me. I would have taken you home to the privacy and comfort of my bed."
Another surge of heat lanced through her. Simple words that painted a vivid picture. He raked his hand through his hair, bent and brushed her nose with his, then kissed the corner of her mouth.
"Be right back." He waded to the sailboat. He wanted to take Brenna in his arms, and hold her until they were so close nothing separated them. Only then would he find relief from the aching need that had consumed him for the past week. Which was fine, he admitted, if a quickie was what he wanted.
It wasn't.
"Cool off," he muttered to himself. "You've got plenty of time." Easier said than done. At least she wasn't so wary of him. And she wasn't running. He glanced around the cove. A fisherman with a couple of kids was a hundred yards in one direction and a family having a picnic on the beach was a bit further away in the other. She didn't have to run. They had chaperons to spare.
Brenna watched the play of muscles on Cole's back and legs as he waded to the boat. For a moment, his profile was to her, and she had no doubt he was as aroused as she. He gripped the edge of the boat, and bowed his head as if in deep thought. A moment later, he reached inside for his T-shirt, which he pulled over his head. Lifting the cooler out of the boat, he headed back toward her.
By the time he returned, the evidence of
his arousal was mostly gone. She didn't have that much control, she silently admitted, wanting to be in his arms again.
Her promise to herself slammed into her. End it or tell him the truth before things went too far. She didn't want to end it. And telling him the truth would surely do that. What she wanted, quite simply, was to be the kind of woman he would be interested in. His intellectual equal, someone who would understand him the way he seemed to understand her.
He stopped a scant foot in front of her, squatted, and waved a hand in front of her eyes. Her gaze snapped to his. He smiled, and she smiled back.
"I didn't think you saw me, you were staring into space so hard. Sunstroke?" he asked, then answered himself. "Nope. Not hot enough."
"I'm plenty hot," she murmured.
He laughed and sat down beside her. "You're an unmerciful tease, Brenna James."
"I'm just trying to figure out how to convince you the Italian sub is mine, if you really brought a liverwurst sandwich."
"Hunger pangs are the problem, then?"
She cast him a dark glance at his double entendre.
"If you can do it, so can I," he said with a wicked grin.
"Trade you my tennies for the sub," she said.
He glanced at her size-six feet. "Tempting offer." He reached past her and pulled out two white-paper-wrapped sandwiches, handing one to her.
She unwrapped it and inhaled the aroma before taking a bite. The sandwich tasted just as good as it smelled.
"Heaven," she murmured.
Cole sat down next to her and took a bite of his own sandwich. "I could almost live on these."
"You said the same thing about apple pie."
"How does that saying go? If you can't have the food you love, love the food you have."
"Girls, too?"
"Nope," he replied without looking at her. "I'm much more particular than that."
Brenna savored another bite from the sandwich, pleased at his admission. He'd deliberately lightened the mood, and she decided to follow his lead.
"So what made you interested in John Marshall?" she asked. The technique was one she'd learned from her mother. Fill any social situation with small talk, and if you're with a man, get him to talk about himself.
"He was assigned. Literally," Cole said. "I was taking an American history class taught by an old guy who was Ebenezer Scrooge incarnate. He assigned a term paper. We were to research eighteenth- or nineteenth-century people whose influence is still felt today. I couldn't think of anyone, so he assigned me John Marshall."
Cole's eyes lit as he stared across the water, his sandwich temporarily forgotten.
"It was wonderful, Brenna. Here was a person who was just a name from history—not even a well-known name. But his ideas reached across more than a century. He was one of the first to see the constitution as a dynamic instrument that could help government act effectively, in 1820 or now. For a while I thought about going into politics. Then I got interested in law." He glanced at her. "I guess that was the first time I figured out what college was all about."
"How so?" Brenna asked. Her need for small talk was gone. She really wanted to know what made Cole tick.
"I thought I was supposed to be in school to get a skill so I could make a living. That's secondary. Ideas. Thousands of ideas. Things I've never thought about or heard of," he said, "that's the important part. To be able to open up a book and find out what someone else thought about the world, what they did about it." He glanced at her. "You know?"
She swallowed. "I know. I feel the same way when I hear a grandparent pass on a story to a child." She looked away from him. "You're very lucky to have such a clear vision, Cole. To know what you want."
"Is that why you're working at Score?" he asked. "To give yourself time to think about what you want to do next?"
"With my job skills…" Her throat closed. She was used to lying, but she found she couldn't lie to Cole.
"You'll figure it out, Brenna," he said, reaching for her. He pulled her against his side and draped a companionable arm around her shoulder. "God, if I'd been through what you've been through the last year, I'd be working at the most mindless thing I could think of."
His explanation provided an easy out, and she grasped it like a drowning woman reaching for a lifeline.
* * *
Chapter 9
« ^ »
"And so the Bremen Town musicians decided to stay at the house. The robbers ran away and were never seen again," Brenna said to the children gathered around her in the reading corner of the library. She closed the colorful picture-book. "And?" She smiled in response to their expectant grins.
"And they lived happily ever after," chorused several of the children.
"Yeah," Brenna agreed.
"That's a good story, Auntie Brennie," Teddy said.
Another little girl leaned against Brenna's leg the way Teddy often did. "I think story hour should be longer."
Brenna chuckled. This was the same child who often started yawning the minute she opened the first page.
"You did great," Nancy said, sitting down next to Brenna on the carpeted cube. "As usual."
"Thanks."
"I sure wished you were here the other day."
"Why?" Brenna asked, watching the last of the children wander away from the reading area.
"We have a new volunteer. She was so nervous I wasn't sure she was going to be able to finish. She botched things up so much that I was sure she had never read a book in her life."
Nancy's tone painted the woman as an imbecile.
"She was probably just nervous because of the kids," Brenna responded.
"Maybe," Nancy agreed reluctantly. "Except this woman couldn't tell which side of a book was up."
"Sounds like she was scared." Brenna had been there often enough herself to know too well all the variations of being scared. "In that situation, there's only one thing to do."
"Which is?"
"Fake it," Brenna said with a smile. "No matter what."
Nancy laughed. "Right. Just like you do."
"Exactly." Brenna knew Nancy would never suspect the truth even though she'd just been told.
"Want to go see a movie this weekend?" Nancy asked, changing the subject to one of their shared interests.
"I can't." Brenna shook her head. "I'm working all day Sunday. My latest cleaning job is a small office complex. After I get into the routine, it should only take me a half day. But, I'm giving myself the whole day the first couple of times."
"You're a glutton for punishment," Nancy said. "There's a new Tom Cruise flick."
"Sounds tempting," Brenna said. The long days were a means to an end—an end that was in sight. She touched Nancy's arm, unable to keep her anticipation to herself. "If this works out like it should, I'll be able to move into my own apartment again within the next two months."
"That's great," Nancy responded with a grin.
Teddy skipped across the reading area toward them and pulled on Brenna's hand. "Come help me," he commanded. "I'm looking for a book about ducks that I found the other day. Now I can't find it."
"What did it look like?" Brenna asked as he led her to the book-stack. She knelt beside him.
"It was red." He gave one red-covered book a glance, then put it back. "I'll never find it."
"Sure you will." She peered more closely at the titles. He might. She surely never would. Gnawing at her lip, she pulled a red book off the shelf. She flipped open the book, and elephants figured prominently in the illustrations. She returned the book to the shelf and pulled out another one.
Her annoyance with herself increased as she peered at the words of the title. Duck began with the letter d, she thought, mentally sounding out the word as she had been taught a lifetime ago. Identifying one letter from one word surely wasn't that hard. The words of the title were blocks of indecipherable symbols, and she wanted to scream her frustration. She ought to be able to read enough to find the title of a book for a four-year-old.
She was just ready to return the book to the shelf when Teddy pulled it from her grasp and opened it up with a quiet sigh of delight.
"This is it!" He set the open book on her lap. "See. Baby Mallard Takes a Trip." He turned one page, then the next, his smile growing wider. "I'm going to get Dad to read it to me."
I'm going to get Dad to read it to me. Just once she'd love Teddy to say that to her. Auntie Brennie, please read to me. Except that he'd already figured out her stories weren't read. They were told. For reading, he needed someone else.
"Do you have the library card, Auntie Brennie?"
She stood up and handed Teddy the card, who skipped off to check out his book on ducks.
Unexpectedly, Cole's words rang through her head. Ideas I'd never thought of. Teddy, like Cole and her brother, was discovering he could explore almost any world he wanted through books. New things. Worlds that she'd miss entirely if she didn't learn how to read. Soon.
The last time she had tried had been a humiliating disaster. She didn't want to face stories geared for a five-year-old, and she wouldn't face another teacher who treated her like a five-year-old.
"Dream it, then be it," she whispered.
This time, somehow, she would find a way.
* * *
Cole gave his notes on the Zach MacKenzie case one last thorough scan before asking Myra to show him in. Dozens of details about the case bothered Cole and simultaneously challenged him. This was exactly the kind of case he'd wanted to represent when he left Jones, Markham and Simmons. And he stayed there, he would never have had the chance.
That Zach MacKenzie was so perfect a suspect for the drunk-driving charges against him had been one of the things that drew Cole to take the case. Zach was athletically good-looking, single, drove a sports car, liked to have a good time, had a history of drinking and driving. One night last May, he had been at the wrong intersection at the wrong time.
Cole trusted his instincts. Zach MacKenzie was telling the truth. And they already had been through Cole's standard talk. "You can lie to your mother. You can lie to the world. But you sure as hell better not lie to me. I guarantee you, we'll both look stupid if you do, and if there's one thing I won't tolerate, it's a client making me look stupid."
CASSIDY'S COURTSHIP Page 9